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Nearly 5,000 seek asylum in Norway in Sept.

Xinhua, October 5, 2015 Adjust font size:

A total of 4,904 asylum seekers came to Norway in September, almost four times as many as the same month last year, the country's immigration agency said on Monday.

So far this year, 13,246 asylum seekers have come to the Nordic country, an increase of about 4,500 from the same period last year, the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) said in a statement.

"The trend is that the number of asylum seekers continues to increase. We estimate that there will be between 20,000 and 25,000 asylum seekers this year," UDI chief Frode Forfang was quoted as saying.

"For the next year, we assume that there will be more than 30,000 asylum seekers. At the same time, we cannot exclude scenarios in which the number is significantly higher, but it can also be lower," Forfang said.

Among the 4,904 asylum seekers who came to Norway in September, 2,631 were Syrians and the rest were Afghans, Iraqis, Eritreans and others. Endit